Category Physics

Illustration of the non-line-of-sight imaging system. Credit: Stanford Computational Imaging Lab

Someday your self-driving car could react to hazards before you even see them, thanks to a laser-based imaging technology that can peek around corners. It sounds like magic but the idea of non-line-of-sight imaging is actually feasible,” said Gordon Wetzstein, assistant professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the paper describing this work, published March 5 in Nature.

The Stanford group isn’t alone in developing methods for bouncing lasers around corners to capture images of objects. Where this research advances the field is in the extremely efficient and effective algorithm the researchers developed to process the final image...

Novel 3D Printing method embeds sensing capabilities within Robotic Actuators

Soft robots that can sense touch, pressure, movement and temperature. Inspired by our bodies’ sensory capabilities, researchers have developed a platform for creating soft robots with embedded sensors that can sense movement, pressure, touch, and even temperature. Researchers at Harvard University have built soft robots inspired by nature that can crawl, swim, grasp delicate objects and even assist a beating heart, but none of these devices has been able to sense and respond to the world around them.

Inspired by our bodies’ sensory capabilities, researchers at the Harvard John A...

This is an artistic impression of a quantum ball lighting. Credit: Heikka Valja

This knotted skyrmion may provide insight into a stable ball of plasma that could enhance future fusion reactors. Scientists at Amherst College and Aalto University have created, for the first time a 3D skyrmion in a quantum gas. The skyrmion was predicted theoretically over 40 years ago, but only now has it been observed experimentally.

In an extremely sparse and cold quantum gas, the physicists have created knots made of the magnetic moments, or spins, of the constituent atoms. The knots exhibit many of the characteristics of ball lightning, which some scientists believe to consist of tangled streams of electric currents...

The electron (blue) orbits the nucleus (red) — and its orbit encloses many other atoms of the Bose-Einstein-condensate (green). Credit: TU Wien

Scientists have provided proof for a new state of matter: an electron orbits a nucleus at a great distance, while many other atoms are bound inside the orbit. What is inside an atom, between the nucleus and the electron? Usually there is nothing, but why could there not be other particles too? If the electron orbits the nucleus at a great distance, there is plenty of space in between for other atoms. A “giant atom” can be created, filled with ordinary atoms. All these atoms form a weak bond, creating a new, exotic state of matter at cold temperatures, referred to as “Rydberg polarons.”

A team of researchers has now presented this state of matter in...